Founded in 1888, the Visitation and Aid Society was a politically progressive, lay-operated
Roman Catholic
charity that established a cooperative church-state welfare system serving delinquent or dependent juveniles, families, and prisoners in
Cook County.
Nationally, it was an important welfare lobby, publishing a journal, the
Juvenile Record
(later, the
Juvenile Court Record
), which tracked social policy developments in North America and Europe. Leaders included Timothy Hurley and William Onahan, who, under V&A auspices, helped to found the world's first
juvenile court
and to quell interreligious rivalries by cooperating with
Protestant
and
Jewish
charities. In 1911, the V&A's work was assumed by the
St. Vincent de Paul Society.

James P. McCartin

Bibliography

Hurley, Timothy.
The Origin of the Illinois Juvenile Court Law.
1907.

Walsh, John Patrick. “The Catholic Church in Chicago and the Problems of Urban Poverty, 1893–1915.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1948.